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Nice to see someone who has the same philosophy as me about getting the shot in-camera, and not spending time on the computer making bad photos look good.(to qualify that statement, if the photo was good, you wouldn't need to edit it)Also a rarity to see someone using an Olympus camera (i use a E420, it's just a hobby that i'm learning)

"It's about getting shots in the camera, not on the PC". You must really hate Ansel Adams' work then, since he did half his work in the PC of his day, spending 16 hours in the darkroom to get a single picture just right, dodging and burning different parts of the negative to create images that would be impossible to take otherwise. 😉

Glad to have come across your videos. Had to smile when you mentioned sunsets. That’s how I feel about them, too.

”I do not think I shall ever forget the sight of Etna at sunset; the mountains almost invisible in a blur of pastel grey, glowing on the top and then repeating its shape, as thought reflected, in a wisp of smoke, with the whole horizon behind radiant with pink light, fading gently into a grey pastel sky. Nothing I have ever seen in Art or Nature was quite so revolting.“– Evelyn Waugh: A Mediterranean Journey (1930), p.169.

One thing I've been often doing for photography is focusing on the lightest subject in the shot. Not completely but enough that it does really help stop the brightness of one thing over exposing the rest of the shot. But then you can only do precise to the point focusing in live view which is just useless for when you've got moving subjects and are shooting one after another with little time to get the shots which obviously moving subjects like animals, flowers, leaves, flags, whatever gets blown in the wind etc, transport. So seeing what polarising filters do, totally what I've been doing with the focus on the brightest subjects of the photo. And then that it allows you to control the glare, something no amount of particular focusing and editing can do, certainly the killer.

That shot in the end had way too much foreground. The rock just kept pulling my eye at it instead of letting me look at the beautiful view far behind it.

Some people like to be no-edit purists but photography is art and to make your art it's fine to do your magic on the computer. It's a part of the process which is of course different for everyone.

I for one think that ND filters are a waste of money and picture quality. You can achieve the same look with multiple exposures and combining them together for smooth looking water or balanced sky and land if you shoot in raw (it retains more dynamic range unlike jpg, where the compression throws away most of your image). It's a choice but it will give you way more artistic wiggle room.

The one question you have to ask yourself is: Are you documenting the world as it is or are you creating something unique?

When resolving the fine details of a landscape image, you really need a higher quality lens than most kit lenses. They don't have to cost a lot either. I'd suggest anyone on a tight budget gets a 50mm prime, as they're known to be sharp and cheap. Also adding filters degrades the image. These days, post processing that's done well is a very essential part of photography. The only filters anyone who's serious about their photo quality needs are a polariser and some ND filters. I'd also not encourage using tripods for most daylight shots with wide angle lenses. It's simply not necessary to cart a heavy tripod up a hill! Rest the camera on a rock, the side of a tree, a wall, etc., if the wind is really that bad.